


i fell in love with a war

by Can_i_get_a_ladies



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Flint and Madi fall in love with Silver and accidentally with each other, M/M, POV Multiple, Season 4 Rewrite, Season/Series 04, Silver submits to the mortifying ordeal of being known and receives the rewards of being loved, absolutely NOT a fix it fic, and having that be the most important thing, but also sometimes not enough, but this focuses mostly on Flint/Silver/Madi, how to you pay attention to two spots in space at the same time, love is knowing someone's deepest self and not using it against them, mirror characters - Freeform, peripheral characters do show up and they are important, practice!, the only thing, to be known, we are here to be sad about loving another person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-22
Updated: 2019-09-22
Packaged: 2020-10-26 09:44:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20740202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Can_i_get_a_ladies/pseuds/Can_i_get_a_ladies
Summary: In which letting yourself be known to somebody means allowing them to love you fully.On the maroon island post-season 3 Flint and Silver become more, and as they move to take Nassau Flint, Silver, and Madi find their relationship hurtling toward something. Silver discovers that Thomas Hamilton is alive, and he has to choose to lie and keep Flint or to give him up.Sometimes, love is selfish, and sometimes, love is simply not enough.





	i fell in love with a war

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "A Pearl" by Mitski:
> 
> It's just that I fell in love with a war  
And nobody told me it ended  
And it left a pearl in my head  
And I roll it around  
Every night, just to watch it glow
> 
> -
> 
> I took inspiration for Silver's backstory from the novel El Buscón by Francisco de Quevedo, a 17th century Spanish picaresque novel. "Buscón" means "trickster" or "swindler" or, more simply, "thief."
> 
> -
> 
> The stanza at the beginning of the fic is from Pablo Neruda's poem "XVII" in the collection One Hundred Love Sonnets

_I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,_

_I love you directly and without problems or pride:_

_I love you like this because I don’t know any other way to love,_

_except in this form in which I am not nor are you,_

_so close that your hand upon my chest is mine,_

_so close that your eyes close with my dreams._

_Where did this all begin?_

Silver had asked to his turned back and hunched shoulders, to his hands loose around a shovel putting all their loss and betrayal and hope into the ground. And, to his true bewilderment, Flint had told him. He had sat down and relayed exactly where this war started, in a house in London, not with a gunshot but with a kiss. Silver has always been good at reading people, and he can read Flint’s shame in the line of his jaw, his grief in the restless movement of his hands, his regret as his eyes dart away. But there is something else. The reason why Flint tells him this at all.

There is nothing left between them, no space, no daylight, and Silver knew that being this close to Flint would be suffocating and dangerous, but he didn’t think it would feel so good. He was afraid of joining him in the darkness, afraid of what they might become. But in that darkness there is the discovery of something in himself he does not have the words nor the courage to name.

* * *

_Who you were…_

Flint asks him and he recounts his tale, and though Flint says he has become transparent to Silver, he realizes how extensively Flint has seen through him all this time. Even when he thought the captain considered him too low a figure to attempt to know, he saw the truth of him, that is, the lie of him.

Despite all of this, he cannot think back on it, cannot possibly put it into words, the horror of his life.

He turns his back and walks down the hill.

* * *

_I have no story to tell._

He pauses and turns and looks at Flint in his white shirt, sword at his side. He’s beautiful like this, in the stillness atop these cliffs, the only backdrop the sky. Half the time Flint bests him is because he can’t stop looking at his eyes and his shoulders and his hips and his legs as they move in tandem. He knows there is no coming back from this road he has gone down because there used to be nothing he wanted more than to escape piracy, escape the sea, escape _Flint. _He would have done anything, he _did _do anything to see that true.

And now.

And now, each time they are in a fight he makes sure he knows where Flint is so that if his peg skids or his swing falters and someone manages to deal him a killing blow, he can look, and the last thing he would see would be Flint in the middle of a fight. Silver wouldn’t want to die with any other image imprinted on the inside of his eyelids. Flint in a fight is the most beautiful thing he has ever seen.

“This life with you has made me into something completely different from what I was,” Silver says, “And as I know you have certain… experience with life forcing you to change your name, your identity, your very soul, I don’t need to explain to you what that feels like.”

Flint doesn’t say anything, and Silver is grateful for it. If he stops, he won’t be able to start again, not now, not ever.

“My given name is not ‘John Silver’, though I think you probably already guessed that. I didn’t know my mother, that’s true. My father went to prison before I was born. He was a thief. A distant cousin took me in, but they hated me. I was not fed. I slept on the floor. I was beaten. Treated worse than the dog. From there I went to the school, the home for boys, where I learned to take a punch, where I learned to turn people against each other so they would turn away from me. They hanged my father, and when I returned to the town of my birth, I was told he had incurred significant debts and I was to pay them. I was sold into forced labor. I was twelve years old.”

He stops, because he can feel the bile rising in his throat, and he stares at the ground because he can’t bear to look at Flint or the sea.

Flint doesn’t tell him he doesn’t have to continue, and this, too, he is grateful for. Flint asked him who he was because for them to move forward together, to be sealed together, this is the last stitch, this is the knot, and without it the whole tapestry will unravel.

“You can imagine, I’m sure, what that was like. Upon my release I moved to a new city, I made new friends, became a good thief and an even better storyteller. I could convince a shopkeeper to give me their most valuable item for pennies. One day, we were betrayed, and then rounded up and sent to prison. Once again, I’m sure you can imagine. I planned, after, to change my ways and try and build a true life for myself. I returned to my home town. I met a girl. I thought that it would be so easy to become a new person and allow the past to fade from memory. I got caught up with the wrong people, and one night they got drunk and killed a man in the street. I was there. I didn’t stop them. But I was resolved to never return to prison again, or to die before they sent me there. I left town that night, went to the coast, boarded the first ship I could and started my life on the sea with a new name and no history. Wasn’t too long after that you found me.”

Around them, the wind blows, and the waves crash, and Silver can’t help but think that something rather more momentous should happen, like lightning striking or birds shrieking, but the world around them takes no notice of the shift that has happened. Silver still feels like the very ground he stands on has tilted.

“I’ve never told anyone that before,” he says needlessly.

“I’d never told anyone about Thomas,” Flint replies, and Silver finally manages to meet his eyes. Flint is looking at him with something akin to understanding, to sympathy, with a sadness that is not quite pity.

“We’ll resume tomorrow?” Silver’s voice is barely a whisper. If he stays here any longer his heart might give out.

Flint nods, and Silver feels his eyes on his back as he makes his way down the hill to the camp.

He spends the evening snapping sticks and feeding them into the fire, heedless of the heat.

* * *

The next day he meets Flint up on the cliffs and neither of them exchange a word besides “Ready?” and “Again." 

Silver is glad for the distraction, hacking at Flint harder today, with much less heed for his leg or his technique, and Flint doesn’t bother correcting him most of the time. After only a short while they are both drenched in sweat.

During the next bout Flint catches Silver’s sword with his and twists his wrist just _so_, causing the sword to go flying out of Silver’s grasp. Instead of placing the blade near his throat, Flint throws his own sword to the side and stands across from Silver with his arms held loosely in front of his face.

Silver cocks his head to the side and gives him a questioning look.

“You won’t always have a sword in your hand,” Flint says, the only explanation offered, and the only warning, before lunging at Silver. 

Silver dodges the first blow and leans onto his foot so that he can use the crutch to whack Flint on the back of his thigh. Flint counters with a punch that catches Sliver in the shoulder, and he lunges forward to push against Flint’s chest before jumping back again.

This time, before Flint strikes out again, Silver sees the glint of something halfway between mischievous and mad in his eyes, and he doesn’t have time to react before Flint reaches out and grabs the crutch and pulls it out from under his arm.

Silver loses his balance for a moment and Flint takes the opportunity to grab his wrist and pull him closer in order to hook an ankle around his leg and pull it out from under him. However, instead of letting Silver hit the ground as he has each time he has fallen before, Flint places a strong arm around his shoulder and lowers him to the ground. Flint’s other hand is on his chest and their faces are so close together Silver can feel the heat of his heaving breaths and Flint’s eyes are on his and Silver cannot look away, cannot speak, cannot move. Flint’s eyes flick for a split second down to Silver’s lips and then he abruptly pulls his arm out from around his shoulders and stands up. All Silver can do it stare up at him, squinting, the edges of the sun peeking out around his shorn head, making it look as if he has a halo.

“Thank you for telling me,” Flint says.

“Now you know who I am. Who I was. Now I am transparent to you.” 

Flint turns around and gives him a hint of a smile, and something seizes inside Silver’s chest. “You say that as if it’s a bad thing.”

Silver, against his better judgement, smiles back. “Isn’t it? We could hold all manner of things against each other. Could use all of this against each other.”

“Except I won’t. I wouldn’t. I couldn’t. Don’t you see?”

He finds that he can’t bring himself to say the words, but he does. He knows that there is only one reason in lives like theirs to let another person hold that sort of power over you. Only one reason why one wouldn’t use it for their own ends.

“Help me up, will you?”

Flint grabs the crutch and brings it to him, first handing it to Silver and then offering his hand. Silver clasps it in his, thumbs hooked around each other, palms pressed tight together, and relies on Flint’s strength to lever him upright. Their hands fall together but come apart too slowly, Flint’s fingertips dragging across Silver’s palm. And, just like that, the hunger that has lived inside Silver for longer than he would admit, since before he knew the names of Flint’s demons, since before they slew ocean beasts together, since before the tempest, before the deal with Rackham and Vane, before he was half a man, that hunger surges through him and he closes the space between them in a single bound. He reaches up his free hand and catches the back of Flint’s head and pulls him down to meet his open and ready mouth.

It is like two ships colliding, hulls cracking and creaking. It is like the whirlpool created by two opposing currents. Silver feels like a fish out of water, gutted and floundering and unable to breathe, because Flint brings both his arms around Silver and pulls him close and kisses him soundly and Silver forgets it was he who started this, forgets anything and everything before this moment in the sun with Flint’s mouth on his.

He says the words without realizing it, answering the question, whispering them into the pockets of air between their mouths and tongues, pressing them into Flint’s lungs. “I see, I see, of course I see. I know, I know, I know,” he says, and Flint only holds him tighter.

Silver lets go of his crutch and lets Flint hold him up, _trusts _Flint to hold him up. He feels Flint’s tongue against his lip and breathes in sharply, deepening the kiss until Flint's inhale is his exhale, his ebb is Silver’s flow. He feels like he’s trying to climb inside him, like stopping for one second would destroy them both.

But, then, like a switch, Flint’s hold on him gentles. It is no less tight but much less urgent, and Silver allows the kiss to slow, and he relishes in the feeling of Flint’s beard on his chin and the graze of his nose across his cheek. Flint pulls his mouth away, but only to press his forehead to Silver’s and to breathe heavily. For a moment the only sound is their comingling breaths. Silver leans forward to bring their mouths together again, pressing hard against every part of Flint. For some reason he can’t quite name, in that moment softness is too much for him to bear.

They pull apart, but Flint keeps his hands firm on Silver’s waist, keeping him balanced. Silver knows Flint won’t let him fall, but suddenly he feels as if they are at a precipice, and he has to trust Flint to stop him from going over the edge.

Flint moves one hand and touches a curl of Silver’s hair hanging in front of his eyes. He just holds it for a minute, and then he gently tucks it behind Silver’s ear.

He feels like Flint has just pushed him off the cliff. 

Without him needing to say anything, perhaps just from seeing the look on his face, Flint bends down and picks up the crutch from where it lay at their feet and hands it back to Silver. He steps back slightly as Silver rights himself and stands under his own power.

“Do you think we could come back from this?” Silver asks, feeling the free fall, the impact, the water overtaking him.

Flint shakes his head with a slight smile. “We’re in it. If there was a point of no return, we passed it weeks back. Maybe months.”

He doesn’t say it with any question or doubt that Silver feels the same, and it is this certainty that allows him some semblance of balance. “I know. I guess I just needed you to say it.”

Flint gives him a long, considering look. “Tomorrow?”

“Yeah,” Silver says, “Tomorrow.”

And Flint leaves him standing on the hill with his swollen lips and tangled hair to watch him go.

* * *

Silver feels like the ends of his hair are on fire, like every person who sees him must see how he is being consumed from the inside out, but the only one who actually notices anything is Madi. They eat together, in her own little open-air dining room, and Silver feels like the feeling that had been growing between them has changed completely. He still cares for her, still finds her beautiful, but Flint has carved out a place in his chest and any attempt to extricate him would destroy him. Separating from him in any meaningful way would leave Silver mutilated.

“You are preoccupied,” Madi says, regarding him levelly over the table, smiling gently. He always treasures her smiles.

“Just thinking about sailing for Nassau, and how crazy we all are for agreeing to this plan.”

Madi looks at him much too knowingly, and Silver feels as if she can see straight through him and into the forest beyond. “Daring and crazy are not the same thing.”

“Though they do often work in concert,” Silver counters.

“However,” Madi continues, “I don’t think that is what has you so tense and distracted.”

Silver smiles back at her. “Well then, if you know my mind so well, what do _you _think?” He expects her to laugh and reply with a quip, but instead she looks directly in his eyes and he knows simultaneously what she is going to say and how desperately he wishes she wouldn’t.

“Flint.” 

His chest aches with something he cannot put to words, something lost at the cost of something gained, and it will be a long time before he knows whether the trade was worth it. He stands and leans down to kiss her firmly on the forehead, and he hears her soft exhale before he pulls away.

“Join me again tomorrow?” she asks, unbearably gently.

“Yeah,” he manages, voice hoarse, “Tomorrow.”

* * *

The next day, instead of going to the cliffs he goes directly to Flint’s cabin. It’s nothing that was agreed upon, like so much between them, it is unspoken. Silver knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that he will find Flint there.

He steps across the threshold without knocking or announcing himself. The hollow sound of his iron shoe striking the wood is as indicative as if he had shouted. Flint is standing with his back to the door, holding something but making no move to turn as Silver approaches. He stops a couple of feet away, unable to bridge the gap until Flint turns and looks at him, confirming that they are here, that they are _this_, that it’s all not just a symptom of Silver’s treacherous memory.

“I want you to have this,” Flint says, and only now does he turn around, revealing that what he’s holding is one of his two dueling pistols. Its twin is sitting on the table next to his cot.

“I already have guns,” Silver replies. He knows Flint doesn’t give anything away lightly, not his possessions or his secrets or his trust.

Flint makes a low humming sound and holds the pistol out to him. Silver takes it from him and settles his palm around the grip, still warm from Flint’s hand. “It’s never misfired. Neither of them.” He looks up from the pistol and meets Silver’s eyes. “I want you to have it,” he repeats.

In a moment, he understands completely. “Thank you.” Silver looks at the gun and traces his finger over the lightly ornate pattern carved into the wood. He glances up and catches Flint watching the path of his fingers. “How long have you had them?”

“Past nine years now. I bought them after my first big prize as a captain.”

Silver peers at him. “There’s a lot of history there. These guns must have put a lot of men in the ground. They shouldn’t be separated.”

“No,” Flint says, “they shouldn’t.”

And, well, there is nothing Silver can do in the face of that but stride forward, step _thunk _step, until he’s directly in front of Flint, looking up the couple of inches to his eyes. Flint leans forward to close the distance between them and press his forehead to Silver’s.

Silver breathes out slowly, shakily, and waits with each muscle in his body clenched tight, the pistol held in his left hand down at his side. Flint brings his hand to Silver’s side and pulls him closer with the slightest of pressure. They sway into each other, bumping hips, shoulders, arms. Silver opens his mouth and tries to ask with his body what he cannot put into words. Thankfully, with this, as with all else, Flint knows what he is trying to say without him ever having to say it. For two men who have made themselves by talking more, louder, better, than those around them, between them they’re rarely able to say anything at all.

Flint kisses him soundly, softly, swiftly, and he guides Silver’s arms around his neck. Silver still has the pistol gripped lightly in his hand and he presses the flat of it into Flint’s back, the cool wood of the grip touching the back of his neck. Flint inhales sharply and kisses him harder, holding Silver with both hands. Silver feels like he would shake apart at the seams if Flint stopped holding him for even a moment.

He swipes his tongue across Flint’s bottom lip and presses his hips forward, starting a push in a specific direction that Flint picks up between one breath and the next. They shift toward the cot, steps moving in tandem like a steady slow dance, never breaking their kiss.

Flint shifts them so Silver is backed up against it, the edge on the back of his knees, and only now does Flint pull away slightly. He moves his arm from Silver’s waist to his shoulder and presses his other hand to his chest until he sits, and then Flint lays him out as he did yesterday on the cliffs. He straightens and removes his shirt and trousers. Silver gently places the pistol alongside the other and then follows suit, first removing the leg, then his pants, and then his shirt, until they are both naked and staring at one another.

It is not the first time they have seen each other in various states of undress, but Silver has never felt so bared before another person before. He feels as if Flint has flayed him alive and can see the twitch of his every muscle, the shift of every bone. Flint, to Silver’s relief and satisfaction, looks similarly unmoored, mouth open as he rakes his eyes up Silver’s body.

Flint climbs onto the cot until he’s on all fours above Silver, and then slowly, agonizingly so, he lowers himself down until there is no place where their bodies aren’t touching. Silver has never been touched like this, like he’s being burned from the inside out.

They kiss again, and press together, and although there is no air between them Silver feels like they aren’t close enough. He digs his fingers into the dip in Flint’s lower back like he’s trying to press through him. Silver is so hot with Flint’s tongue warm in his mouth and the sweat commingling on their skin and the two of them hard and aching and rocking against each other that he wouldn’t be surprised if he burst into flames. He thinks he may not even notice if he did.

Silver knows it would be easier if he could get a hand between them, but he would rather this clumsy pressure of flesh on flesh, he would rather Flint never let him go.

Flint moves from his mouth to kiss his neck, and though it is unwise for him to leave marks, as they both know, he can’t seem to stop himself from biting down. Silver pulls at the back of his neck to urge him harder and moves his hips to urge him faster and he closes his eyes and relishes in the feeling of Flint’s undivided attention. A few months ago, hell, a few weeks ago, it would have been a terrifying thing to have Flint focused solely on him, but now Silver feels drunk on it, feels powerful on it.

They move together until both of their breath starts to come in short pants and Flint is pressing his face into Silver’s neck more than kissing there. Silver comes first, silently, a long-held breath followed by heaving exhales. When Flint follows, he makes a series of soft, hitching moans, and Silver holds him close and tries his best to commit the sounds to memory.

Laying there, breathing hard and still clutching each other like dying men, Silver thinks now he may truly know the entire shape of Flint, hearing the sounds of his pleasure somehow even more intimate than the truth of his past.

They stay like that for a long time, long after it is comfortable. At long last, Flint shifts and makes a move to get off of Silver. For a second, Silver wants to clutch him tighter, make him stay, because if they separate the moment will be over, and they will never be able to return to it.

He lets him go. 

Flint gets up and strides across the room, dipping a rag into a basin of tepid water and wiping himself off before dipping and wringing it out again and bringing it to Silver. They lock eyes while Silver cleans himself as best he can, but neither of them make a move to speak. Silver finds he is at a loss for words, and he thinks, he _knows_, that Flint feels the same. Flint looks away and sits on the bed, placing his hand at his side. Silver covers it with his, briefly, finding he is also unable to look at Flint as he does so.

“We should get to the cliffs,” Flint says, gathering his clothes and starting to put them on.

Silver stares at him, mouth agape, still lying completely naked in Flint’s _bed_, until he can stutter out a reply. “Really?” is all he manages, trying to sound as incredulous as possible.

“I didn’t offer to train you as a cheap ploy,” he says.

Silver knows that is the closest he will get to acknowledging what they are. He sighs. “Well alright then.”

He puts on his clothes, saving the leg for last, and then follows Flint out of the cabin and up the hill to their spot. They continue on as they have been, the dance between them long rehearsed and perfected by now.

_Slash. Parry. Jab. Curse. Joke. Laugh. Slash. Parry. Jab._

* * *

Madi stands up while they are eating, seemingly unprompted, and comes to stands in front of him, forcing him to push his chair back from the table so she can place her knees on either side of his thighs and sit astride him. When she kisses him she tastes cold and sweet and something pangs deep in his chest, a familiar longing for something much less changeable than the sea. He wants in that moment to be the man who could give that to her, to be the man she would want to give her that, but even with her lips on his and his hands tight on her waist he can’t help thinking of his other much more immediate and all-consuming desires.

And yet, he loves her, in a way, and he wants her like this, so he pulls her closer and kisses her harder and takes pleasure in being that man for her, if only for an afternoon.

* * *

On the day before they are to leave for Nassau Flint shoves him up against the wall of his cabin and takes his breath away and drops to his knees to put his mouth on Silver and Silver thinks if he is to die tomorrow, he will die in peace with the memory of this, of Flint’s hands hard on his hips.

Flint on his knees is the most beautiful thing he has ever seen.

* * *

Silver slips beneath the waves thinking drowning because his false leg is dragging him down is simultaneously the shittiest and most fitting way for him to die. He’s felt trapped by the leg since the first time he put it on.

He thinks about Madi and hopes that she won’t mourn him overmuch. She’s too good a woman to waste time on a man like him.

He thinks of Flint and how he was in the days and weeks after Charles Town, after losing Mrs. Barlow. Flint will almost definitely get himself killed throwing himself into this war. He thinks about Flint in a fight. He thinks about Flint on his knees.

Silver thinks about this, and decides he is not fucking ready to die. He cuts the leather strap of the leg and leaves it to rest at the bottom of the ocean along with the rest of the debris of the day, and as he swims towards the surface, despite the burning of his lungs and the salt in his eyes, he feels light, and calm.

He breaks the surface and breathes.

* * *

* * *

Flint starts to strip off his jacket and move to dive beneath the waves, but there are gunshots and explosions everywhere and it’s too late.

He hears Madi scream and shouts at his men, _their _men, to return fire, to row to shore, to do something at all to try and save themselves, and it’s too late.

He watches their ships burn and looks at the churning water around him he knows is filled with blood and bodies and wood and the shattered pieces of the fragile peace he had built back on the maroon island.

His boat makes it to shore and he starts to move amongst the men, mentally cataloguing their losses in an attempt to distract himself from his own, from the ragged wound punched through his center. 

Flint is a patchwork man, has been since James McGraw created him out of the depths of his rage and griefs ten years ago, made up of a series of half-healed wounds until he was more scar tissue than flesh and blood. It was something of a comfort to him, albeit a hollow one, that Silver was enough the same, figuratively and literally, that he saw the depths of him and still saw him as a man.

Now he’s just a tired old sailor with nothing left to lose but this war and his wits, and he can’t be sure whether or not both have been lost already.

Another boat comes in and they tell him the next one is the last, and that they saw them heave a man in from the waters, half-drowned, and Flint feels the hot coals of a treacherous hope deep in his belly.

He does another round of the remaining men before returning to the shore. Madi is already standing there, looking serenely out into the water. She had heard the same as him, she is here for the same reason as him.

“I understand you have come to care for him,” he says, meaning _I know what you are, he told me what you mean to him._

“Become friends, even.” _I know what this is._

“I guess what I’m trying to say is… he is my friend, too.” _Me too. Know this. I know him too. Me too._

The last boat comes in and Silver isn’t on it.

_Too late. Too late. Too late._

* * *

Without Silver here, Flint feels like he could blow away like so much smoke. After Thomas, it felt like he had died, and though Miranda kept him in the land of the living as best she could, forced him to look at other people and really _see _them, instead of just a sea of shades. But he was never quite good at that, even when she was still alive, never got the hang of caring. All the care, all the love had been wrung out of him. It took everything to remain solid for Miranda, and he still felt he failed her more often than not.

Silver had been the first person to reach out and actually touch him in such a long time that Flint had nearly forgotten what it felt to be real, to be flesh and blood, to have wants and desires in the present, to not have his whole self caught up in the past.

Flint argues with Billy and feels his control over the men, over any of it, slipping away, and he is brought back into that cage where Silver practically dragged him from the other side of death. This time, though, there’s no Silver, there’s no one at all. Madi is the closest thing, and he sees a startling amount of his own passion and determination in her, to the point where he thinks grief like theirs can only be distracted from with violence, because softness is what gets under the skin. This life of theirs, all the killing and war, had turned Flint to stone, and he can see Madi hardening with each passing moment.

Everything goes to shit, as it always does, and Flint stays with Madi, protects her, because he knows in his bones it is what Silver would have wanted him to do.

They fall into a sort of balance, him deferring to her authority, her listening to his counsel. She has the last word, but Flint feels a strange equality between them start to grow, a balance that Flint was never able to quite strike with Silver, or with Gates. It feels, he realizes, a bit like being with Miranda again.

They are talking strategy and Madi mentions a passage from Woodes Rogers’ book, and Flint’s grief for Miranda rears up like a tidal wave inside of him. He wants to be at their house with her, sitting at their table, or making her dinner, or running his hands through her hair, her back against his chest, while she reads a book he has brought her. Flint breathes in and out and it feels like he has to physically push the pain to the side, and he is left looking at Madi. She is looking back at him with a queer look on her face, and he thinks she may see through him, as she is no stranger to grief.

“You remind me of my wife,” he says. Before Silver he would have never said something like that. Parts of him have been opened that he thought were closed for good.

Madi offers him a smile, and he answers it immediately, automatically, when usually even an upward curl of his lip has to be dragged out of him.

“Thank you,” she says, taking it for the compliment it is, “You lost her, yes?” Her voice is soft, and it has been so long since someone treated him with true gentleness that Flint feels liable to fly apart at any moment.

He nods. “At Charles Town.”

She takes a single step toward him and places her hand on his shoulder, and both of them exhale in tandem. “It must be very hard for you, losing him, too.”

He looks into her eyes and sees his own grief reflected exactly there and knows that she heard him on the beach. Before, on the island, Silver was positioned between them, in balance, but now Silver is gone, and all is left is the two of them, facing each other.

Flint nods, and Madi does the same. When she departs to go to Nassau to meet her contacts, she quotes _Don Quixote_, and Flint is back in the Hamilton’s study, Miranda smiling at him like he is the stupidest and dearest thing she has ever seen. He watches Madi descend down the hill and sees with perfect clarity why Silver loved her.

She comes back from Nassau and tells him that Silver is alive, and he feels a fissure crack open through the center of him.

* * *

He is running around the wrecks, trying to find Silver before the governor’s men can, and he thinks of how much he would rather be searching for a thieving, lying cook and a missing page and racing against Vane and Rackham and time and not against the force of an empire.

This time, when he catches Silver, instead of fear and desperation, he looks like a starving man sat in front of a feast. This time, Flint still wants to push him hard against the rocks, but instead of placing a dagger to a throat he wants to put his mouth there. Flint walks up to him and holds out his arm, and when Silver’s hand is in his it is the first time he has felt real since he saw him go beneath the waves. He hauls him up and pulls him close for a second, easily passed off and helping Silver balance with his crutch, and the press of his body, however fleeting, is like balm on a burn.

They flee the wrecks and journey into the interior, and Flint walks beside Silver, matching his uneven steps until it feels like they’re moving like one thing, not a breath of air between them. Somehow, through nearly drowning and being captured and dying more than once over, Flint’s dueling pistol still rests snugly in the holster across Silver’s chest. Flint feels it like a physical bond, the twin guns mirrored on their bodies.

Their rhythm falters the second Silver sees Madi, and Flint watches them run to each other with as neutral an expression as he can manage.

He wants to be able to wrap Silver in an embrace like that with no concern for anyone watching, but he also can’t bring himself to resent either of them for the open affection. He’s gotten past the point where he can begrudge anyone love. Not when it’s so hard to come by.

That doesn’t mean it doesn’t feel good when Flint manages a moment alone with Silver, nothing more than a couple of seconds, but when Flint presses into him and brings their mouths together Silver melts against him without even a split-second’s hesitation. Flint has always had a possessive streak. It’s something Thomas secretly liked, and Miranda had open distaste for. It’s what kept him after the Urca gold no matter the cost, no matter the sacrifice.

As Silver folds into him, yielding to him in a way that drives Flint mad, Flint holds him tighter and thinks one word.

_Mine_.

* * *

Taking Nassau back goes so perfectly Flint could be convinced it is a dream, but the air is thick with screams and clouds of dirt and dust and powder and the heady scent of blood, and nothing has ever felt more real than the sword in his hand and Silver fighting at his side and Madi with their army behind him. Billy arrives, and it is all over practically as soon as it begins.

Flint feels something akin to vertigo, being in Eleanor Guthrie’s tavern, and even though he knows it hasn’t been hers in a long time, that’s what it will always be to him. He’s here with Silver and instead of shackling him to a sofa or glowering at him over the desk they are standing together at the head of this thing they have put into motion.

They echo each other’s words, each other’s actions, as if there is a cord holding them together so when one moves, the other must follow. Flint feels as if Silver is hooked underneath his rib, sharp and ever-present, taking his breath away.

Madi watches them, and Flint watches her, and they both watch Silver miss it completely.

At one point, the three of them gravitate into a loose circle, and Madi and Silver exchange and look and then Flint and Silver exchange a look and then Flint and Madi exchange a look and Flint nearly laughs out loud at the ridiculousness of the different levels of unspoken conversation going on between them.

They are hurtling unstoppably toward something, and for the first time in a long, long time, Flint feels something akin to excitement at what it might be.

* * *

* * *

Silver’s whole body hurts from the events of the last few days, and it is something of a relief to step into the quiet room and slump down in a chair across from Max.

He feels it, seeing her in this place, that something of her is infused into the wood of this room. Something of Eleanor Guthrie, too. It is the heart of Nassau and the two of them had put their entire selves into it to keep it fucking beating.

Sitting across from her, Silver feels in every ache of his body how far they have come from a coward and a common whore who thought they could cheat Flint and maneuver Rackham and Bonny and Vane. Far from the cook and the brothel madam who cooked up a plot to steal the Urca gold out from under Flint. So, so far, and yet, she still looks at him the same way she did on his first day in Nassau, calculating and with a hint of a smirk. Even now, missing a leg and the declared pirate king of Nassau, she sees right to the core of him.

She mentions the camp and Silver can only think of one thing, of one name. He asks Max about the families and she doesn’t know but he does.

The certainty that grasps him is like a vice around his throat. He is there. He is alive. The man that Flint loves, the man whose loss drove Flint to madness, to monstrousness, to the end of the earth, is still out there across a mere few hundred miles of sea.

Silver shuts the door and thinks in the back of his mind that it might be the last time he ever speaks to Max. Somehow, he doesn’t think it is.

Flint is waiting for him outside the door and just looking at him makes the vice tighten. Silver cannot breathe, he cannot think anything but how badly he doesn’t want to lose this. He doesn’t want Flint’s warm eyes and his easy smiles that used to be only cold and sharp and angry gone from his life.

Silver has made a lot of selfish decisions in his life, and he knows this is the worst of them all, but it only takes him a second to make it.

He sends a man to Georgia, just to be sure, and he stands by Flint’s side and he brushes his arm against Flint’s chest as they both turn and with every second of Flint’s attention on him he knows he cannot give it up.

* * *

* * *

Flint is surprised to get the message from Eleanor, surprised particularly by the request of a meeting with just himself and ‘Long John Silver.’

“It could be a trap,” Silver says, but Flint can hear the resignation in his voice even as he protests.

Flint looks at him out of the corner of his eye. “I doubt it. Eleanor wouldn’t lure us into the tunnels to try and kill us. There is little to gain, as this war is happening with or without us,” Flint glances over at Madi to find her already looking at him, “And, she knows there is a chance I could take some of her men down with me, men she knows she cannot afford to lose.”

“_We _could take some of them down,” Silver adds, and Flint would think he was being petulant if he didn’t catch the glimmer of humor in his eyes.

“The last time Eleanor Guthrie met you, you didn’t know which end of a knife to hold to _cook_, much less fight.”

Madi laughs, and Flint very nearly joins her, feeling lighter than he had since before he ever heard of the Urca de Lima. Silver looks between the two of them and Flint sees the first hints of something dawn on his face.

“We should not pass up an opportunity like this to make peace, and possibly regain control of the fort. The two of you will go,” Madi says, and her word is absolutely final.

Flint nods and walks out of the office, leaving the two of them alone. He waits outside the door until Silver emerges, a few minutes later, a slight flush in his cheeks, and Flint can’t help but smile at that.

At the appointed time, they venture into the tunnel to meet with Eleanor, and something about the cool silence of the tunnels stops the both of them from saying nearly anything as they walk. Flint thinks, though, when they’re about halfway through, about what he knows of Eleanor Guthrie. She may strike a deal, but only if she feels she is getting precisely what she wants out of it, and if there is assurance of the completion of said deal. They hold Nassau, they hold the beach, and Eleanor has almost nothing to stand on, and yet Flint has a feeling like a premonition that this meeting will set things into motion that none of them can come back from.

He doesn’t know what is going to happen, so he puts out an arm and stops Silver walking.

“What is it?” he asks, obviously confused.

Flint offers no explanation other than setting the torch down carefully on the floor and then immediately crowding Silver’s space, pressing him gently against the cold wall.

A cut off “Wha-” is all Silver manages before Flint’s mouth is on his, hungry and insistent, and Flint can taste something slightly different on Silver’s lips, on his mouth, that he now knows to be Madi’s taste. He can smell her on Silver’s skin, and it only makes Flint kiss him harder, shoving his thigh between Silver’s legs and pressing his tongue into his mouth.

They pull apart for a breathless moment before Flint goes back in for another kiss, and another, and another.

“We should carry on,” he says, finally, literally wrenching himself off of Silver and picking the torch up off the ground.

“Not that I’m complaining,” Silver says, breathless, “but what the hell was that for?”

Flint gives him a look and hopes Silver can’t tell what he’s really thinking. “Couldn’t pass up the opportunity. Never know when it’ll come again, in war.” Never know if it will never come again, he pointedly does not say.

Silver just gazes back at him for a long moment before righting himself on the crutch and they fall back into step together. They don’t say anything else to each other until they reach the gate. 

Flint takes his pistol out of its holster and hands it to Silver along with the torch, and now Silver has the complete set and Flint turns from him with empty hands, wishing to embrace him and moving away instead.

When Flint goes through to stand with Eleanor, as he knew he was going to from the moment she started talking, it feels less like he has walked through the doorway and more like he has been pulled bodily through the crossbars, leaving him all in pieces.

He meets Silver’s eyes through the bars and sees that he gets it, now, gets that it might have been the last time.

However, as they part ways, Flint has hope, emanating from the place in his chest where Silver has taken up residence. It’s been a long time since Flint had faith in somebody. It feels good, and even when they put him in a cell and leave him in the damp and dark chill, he still feels warm.

* * *

* * *

“We cannot let Billy kill Flint,” Madi says, and Silver is almost offended that she might think he would even consider letting that happen, but then he looks at her and sees that she isn’t trying to convince him, she is only stating a fact.

“We are running out of time in which to put our plan into motion. The cache is not here, nor is it coming. We have to find a way to get Flint out of that fort, safely, _without _giving up the cache, and do it without Billy’s knowledge, _and _simultaneously find a way to eliminate Billy before he rises against us.” Silver’s head is hurting, though that has become rather a permanent state since accepting the mantle of Long John Silver.

Madi glances over at him. They are in the shelled-out house she and Flint had retreated to after the fight at the Underhill plantation. Silver thought any place is Nassau was too public, too dangerous to have the conversation they needed to have. And, selfishly, softly, he wanted the peace of walking side by side with Madi, of taking her hand, of pretending, if only within his own mind, if only for a moment, that they exist outside this war.

He had asked each her and Flint a question, the same question, truly. Would they give up this war for love, for a life outside of violence and strife?

Silver knew, both times, before either of them spoke, that they were not going to tell him what he wanted to hear. It took him longer than it should have to notice how similar the two of them truly are, mirrors of each other though they couldn’t come from more disparate backgrounds. He supposes it took them losing him to see it in each other, and as the three of them grow closer and closer as the triumvirate at the head of this war, Silver feels the lines drawn between them blurring.

He would have hesitated, hell, he would have refused, once, to betray Billy in the way they are planning, but given the choice between Flint and Madi and him, Silver can’t fool himself into thinking this was ever going to go another way.

“I have an idea,” Madi says.

Silver can’t resist leaning forward and kissing her softly. He feels her smile on his lips before she gently pulls away.

“Do you want to hear it, or are you going to keep kissing me if I try?”

He laughs and leans back against the stone windowsill, gesturing for her to continue.

“We send a message into the fort telling them to exit through the southern tunnels. We tell Billy we have told them to come through the northern tunnels. I will go, with men of my own, to retrieve Flint and take him across the island to the south coast. You will convince the men of Billy’s treachery, and the rest, I’m sure, will follow naturally.”

It is a sound plan, but it doesn’t quite sit right with him. Madi sees this, of course, and narrows her eyes at him. “I know it is difficult for you to betray Billy in this way, but after the events at the plantation we have no other choice.”

Silver tries to sort out the feelings roiling inside him. “I know,” he says, honestly.

“Then what is the matter?” She sounds exasperated with him, but still fond, always fond, beneath it all. Looking at her, for a moment, Silver sees the same expression on Flint’s face like seeing double.

The answer to this question is the answer to most of the questions she asks him. “Ah,” she says, understanding dawning on her face, “You want to be the one to meet him, coming out of the tunnels.”

He doesn’t waste either of their time denying it, but he feels that she deserves some measure of explanation. “I know that your plan is the best way we can go about this, the only way, but I can’t help but wish…” he trails off, finding himself completely unable to express his desires.

“John.” He looks up at her immediately, hearing something different in her tone. She shifts closer until she is standing directly in front of him, tilting her head up slightly to look into his eyes. “I know I am not your only lover.”

For a moment, he panics, hearing it spoken so plainly, here in the daylight, as if someone is going to catch him, going to accuse him. But Madi just keeps looking at him without a hint of resentment or jealousy in her expression.

“I’ll bring him back to you,” she murmurs, and then leans forward to press their mouths together once more and Silver is kissing her, head reeling and heart beating through his chest and he is kissing Flint in the darkness of the tunnel and Madi is kissing Flint through him and Silver feels as if he is going to combust.

Silver knows she will, trusts she will, but something adjacent to fear roots itself in his stomach because the lines between them have blurred out of existence, leaving him drifting, trying to hold together his life, his loves, with both hands.

* * *

* * *

Flint steps out, squinting in the bright sunlight, and finds the sight of Madi equally as welcome as the sun on his face after days locked up inside the fort. Madi’s eyes move from him to Eleanor, and he knows they knew each other when they were both children, but there is no recognition or emotion betrayed on her face.

“Come. We will take you to the south coast,” she says.

“To the cache,” Eleanor shoots back firmly. Madi nods and then turns her back and starts to walk away. Her men wait until Flint, Eleanor, and the British soldiers have passed by before bringing up the rear. Flint can see the rigid tension in the recoats in how they clutch their muskets and hunch their shoulders, but Eleanor looks as relaxed as if she is going on a stroll. 

Flint peers at her out of the corner of his eye, trying still to puzzle out what has happened to bring about such a change in her. When he first met Eleanor Guthrie, she was practically still a child, but he has always known hunger when he sees it, and the look in her eyes was that of a woman starved. That girl, the woman who plotted to steal the Urca at his side, who tamed and betrayed Charles Vane, would never have gone down this way, the coward’s way.

However, the time has passed where he could speak with her plainly, honestly, and so he moves forward towards Madi and tries to shake the sense memory of Eleanor’s smooth forehead beneath his lips.

“How have things been while I’ve been gone?” he asks her once he’s only a step behind. Madi doesn’t startle at his voice or stop to fall into step with him, merely waits for him to come alongside her.

“The men haven’t all killed each other or burned Nassau to the ground yet.”

Flint huffs out a breath, “Everything in order, then.”

Madi gives him a look out of the corner of her eye. They walk in silence for a while, Flint expecting her to continue or say something else, but instead she maintains a pointed silence and Flint feels almost chastised though he can’t for the life of him put his finger on what he’s done wrong.

Thankfully, she takes mercy on him after a few minutes of loaded silence. “Silver is taking care of Billy as we speak.”

Flint absorbs this information without much surprise. Billy has been watching his back with the intention to put a knife in it for such a long time that Flint is frankly surprised it took this long for it to come to this. He can guess what happened. “Billy made him choose.”

Madi nods. “Even now, even as this betrayal is occurring, I think Billy truly believes Silver will choose his side.”

“Well, Billy made him into a king. He probably expected that to mean something.”

She scoffs at this. “It will never stop amazing me, how stupid you pirates can be.”

Flint glances over, unsure of whether or not to take that as a personal affront and waits for her to turn to meet his gaze before raising an eyebrow in question.

“I simply cannot believe that anyone who has seen the two of you together would think for a moment he would choose anyone over you.”

The words hang in the air between them, and Flint knows better than to play the fool with her. He knows he should say something to explain himself, to defend Silver, but this is the point at which words fail. Somehow, Madi manages to see at least part of the way into his complicated silence.

“I thought it was time the three of us stopped dancing around each other and spoke plainly, for once.”

He looks at her, really looks, and marvels at her serene and simple expression, her skin gleaming with a thin sheen of sweat in the midafternoon sun. She isn’t angry, or upset, or even resigned. Flint knows Eleanor and her men are watching the two of them, but he can’t quite bring himself to care. He takes Madi’s hand in his, firmly, and brings it up to his lips. Flint kisses the back of her hand before letting their joined hands fall back to his side, but before he lets go, he feels her squeeze, just once, softly, and something warm and overwhelming expands in his chest.

They walk along in silence for a few more minutes, and Flint is almost able to ignore the soldiers at their backs, and the war ahead of him, and just enjoy the comfort of her company.

A thought occurs to him and he laughs softly. Madi nudges him with her elbow by way of question. “You have to have this conversation with him,” he says, “because I think he might shoot me before I was finished explaining.”

Madi laughs at this, a true, clear laugh, and it makes Flint want to live just to hear it again.

But then they come upon the beach and find Jack Rackham, and Flint knows that none of this is going to go the way he wants it to.

* * *

Flint cuts down the last of the Spanish soldiers that got away, but he knows even without those messengers the army will be upon them soon. The entire island is lost, and all they can do is run and regroup and try to salvage something out of this mess.

They had to run further than he’d hoped, and though he runs back to Miranda’s house, their _home_, as fast as he can, he can smell the smoke on the air, and he knows something terrible has happened. He has found, in his life, that any sort of balance or victory is usually followed by a swift and concrete defeat. Maybe Silver was right, maybe Flint has manufactured all his own tragedies.

He arrives and finds Eleanor lying there, somehow still alive despite smoke in her lungs and blood soaked through the side of her dress. Flint leans down and says “Hey, hey,” as gently as he can, thinking of a young blonde girl standing behind the bar in his father’s tavern, obviously thinking herself invincible not despite the bloodthirsty pirates surrounding her, but because she was one of them.

She tells him that Madi is dead and Flint thought by this point he would have figured out all the ways to hurt, but this one feels new, feels like a future cut off before it had a chance to begin.

Flint tells Eleanor what she wants to hear, because if anyone deserves peace in her last moments, it’s her. He wants to _kill _Woodes Rogers, he wants to burn the Spanish Navy, and most of all he wants to go back before any of this, walk through the door of his home to find Miranda making tea or hanging laundry or some other achingly domestic task. But that home is well on its way to being ash, now, and Miranda is long gone.

He stands for a few moments, unable to pull himself away from the flames until one of the men comes up and takes his arm, and Flint knows they are speaking to him but he can’t hear anything anymore over the sound of his own fear.

Flint is not scared of death, or the Spanish, or of any pirate on this fucking island, but he is petrified at the thought of seeing Silver again and having to tell him that he wasn’t able to keep Madi safe.

They make it to the plantation, where Silver has been fighting a battle of his own, and the first words out of his mouth when he sees Flint are “Where’s Madi” and Flint can’t say anything, can’t do anything but look at him and make him understand. It hits Silver like a physical weight, and he stumbles backwards until he can find something to support himself.

Flint bows his head, and accepts this guilt, this shame, alongside the rest.

* * *

“It wasn’t your fault,” Silver says, and no one has ever said that to him, absolved him in this way, and he steps over and places his hand on Silver’s shoulder and before he knows what’s happening Silver is out of the chair and into his arms. He presses his face wet with tears and sweat into Flints neck and fists his hands in Flint’s jacket. Flint holds him right back, doing all he can to hold him together, but he knows, as he always known, that two misshapen and incomplete men could never make each other fully whole.

Maybe they could have been, but any chance of that went up in smoke along with everything remaining that belonged to Flint except this ship and the man in his arms.

* * *

Madi is alive, and Flint is going to save her, but his heart is too tired for hope.

* * *

* * *

It’s not that he doesn’t trust Flint, but there is no part of Silver that can go into this without a backup plan. He cannot leave this island without having some measure of certainty that he can get Madi back.

He brings some men into the forest, and it is something new and not without use that when he speaks, men listen, and they do as he says. Silver points to the place in the ground and watches as they dig up the cache, and he tries not to think of a firelit conversation, and secrets come to light, and the beginning of something he wouldn’t give back, not even now, not for anything.

The chest comes out of the ground, covered in dirt and heavy with all the fucking strife they have all poured into it.

Silver wishes it didn’t feel like making a choice there is no coming back from, especially because there is a voice in the back of his head that sounds suspiciously like Flint telling him that he may think he is choosing Madi, choosing her life over this war, but that he is truly choosing himself and his own preservation.

The voice can’t stop him, though, because Silver has never been a particularly strong or good man, and he knows with a chance to get her back he cannot stand to lose her once more.

She may not forgive him, and neither may Flint, but they will live, and as long as that’s true Silver doesn’t care much what happens.

* * *

* * *

Flint feels torn in ten different directions, but it is not necessarily a new feeling for him, and he does what he always has, found his focus and become ruthless in order to do what must be done.

There is no room in his head for the possibility that they will fail in rescuing Madi, but he also knows that if they rescue her at the cost of the cache that, to her, it would be effectively like putting a bullet through her temple. Madi has made herself one with this war, with this cause, and would sacrifice anything, including herself, including him, including Silver, to keep it alive.

Flint has betrayed so many people in his life, people he has loved, people he has hated, but he always had a reason for it, always believed in the end it was the right thing to do.

He is no less sure now, but he is far from certain he will be able to live with the consequences. He thinks of what Silver is going to do when he finds out that Flint has stolen the cache.

He thinks of kissing Silver in the tunnels beneath the fort, before everything started to fall apart, and he is glad, not for the first time, not for the last, that he did. Flint carries that kiss with him tucked away under his ribs as he heaves the cache into the water and dives in after it.

* * *

* * *

Silver knows, from the moment he sees Flint and Dooley dragging the cache onto the sand, perhaps even from the moment Flint found out he had dug it up and brought it with them, that this can only go one of two ways.

He sends the men after Flint, and he orders them to kill him, not believing for a second that they will be able to, even Joji and Hands. Silver knows something about Flint that none of them do, that he is only vulnerable to those closest to them. Captain Flint cannot be killed by an enemy. He could only ever be defeated, be unmade, by a true friend.

Silver goes after him, following the trail of bodies, completely unsure about what he is going to do, and knowing that when he sees Flint it might very well undo any last sure thing inside of him.

Back when they started, when they _truly _started, after the warship, Silver thought even then that the two of them could become closer to each other, become _more _to each other than anyone else, or could be each other’s bloody ends.

He should have known that it was going to be both.

It all feels so inevitable now, Flint shooting Dooley over his shoulder, the bullet whizzing past Silver’s hair, and crossing swords with Flint, him fighting defensively the whole time. Flint had never let him win, never given him even an inch of space when he was training him, now he only prevents Silver’s blade from cutting him and nothing more.

The Walrus burns and Rackham arrives, and Silver can’t look at Flint, can’t listen to him, because he knows he will crumble the second he does. This thing between them has caused so much pain and suffering and death around them, and Silver can’t bring himself to regret a single second of it. All he wants is to give in and fold himself into Flint’s embrace, into the space he has carved for himself there, and he knows in his bones that Flint would accept him without a second thought. But what is that, a thing that disregards so much violence? Who are they, if they allow all of that to continue around them without regard simply because they don’t want to let go of this comfort?

Silver realizes, then, that letting this continue would be the most selfish thing he has ever done. The two of them could bring the world to heel, or at least it feels that way, and Silver cannot permit that, even for Flint's smile, or the sound of Flint's heartbeat in his ear when Silver presses his ear against his chest.

And so, in the wake of that, there are only two ways this thing can go.

They fight together one last time, and Silver goes belowdecks where he can’t see Flint, but the vision of Flint in his dirty shirt brandishing his curved blade is burned into his mind. If he dies here, he’ll die seeing him.

He finds Madi and finding her _alive _after all of this hits him with a force so strong it is almost painful. Silver holds her, and he kisses her, and he knows exactly how Flint felt beneath that fucking fort before he gave himself away to Eleanor Guthrie because he knows now precisely what he is going to do, and he knows, too, that this very well may be the last time Madi ever permits him to touch her.

The battle ends and Madi is safe and Silver’s plans with Rackham are already set in motion, no stopping them now, and he takes a group of men into the forest. 

He finds himself facing Flint, and there are only two ways this thing could have gone, and Silver knows now how it must. It is both the most selfish and selfless thing he has ever done.

Flint tries so _fucking _hard to convince him, and Silver is back on the Walrus, Flint with Singletons blood up to his forearms, Silver is on a warship watching the crew pause for just a second before they follow Flint’s order to fire, Silver is in a cage waiting for Flint to come back, alive or not at all, something clicking into place in his chest when Flint emerges, unbound, and the door to the cage is unlocked. But Flint can’t convince him this time, he has taught him too well. Silver has memorized the mesmerizing rise and fall of Flint's voice and the intensity in his eyes and the clenching of his jaw, and he is unmoved.

“I am going to tell you something you don’t want to hear,” Silver says, putting down the gun, the gun Flint gave him, knowing he was never going to be able to use it in the first place.

Flint scoffs at him. “Nothing you’ve said has been particularly pleasing to my ears.”

“Before you found me, back in Nassau, Max attempted to capture me with the intention of sending me to a labor camp in Savannah where men are sent to disappear, for a fee.” Silver can see that Flint is caught off-guard by this, unsure of where it is going. “It is oft used by wealthy London families to rid themselves of unwanted relatives without getting blood on their hands. I’m sure they view it as a mercy.”

Flint is too smart, to quick, to not see where this is going, and Silver can see the denial and rejection of the very idea of it forming in real time.

“I sent a man there, and he returned nearly in concert with the Spanish, managing to make it to us just as we were fleeing the island. He told me what I already knew to be true.”

The time has come for the confession that has been burning a hole through Silver’s chest for weeks now, flaring hotter each time Flint touched him, and Silver finds the words caught in his throat. Flint is looking at him desperately, silently begging him to not continue. He thinks in that moment Flint would rather he shoot him in the head than speak the truth.

“He’s alive, James,” Silver says, whispering. 

“Don’t call me James,” Flint growls in response, fists clenching and teeth grating, the very picture of a caged wild animal.

Silver tries not to feel that like a blow, and presses on. “Thomas Hamilton is alive, and I am sending you to him.”

He tenses, expecting any level of reaction, from shouting to punching to crying. What he doesn’t expect is for all the anger and tension in Flint to leave him in a single breath. All of a sudden, he looks smaller than Silver has ever seen him.

“You believe me?” Silver says, completely incredulous, unable to stop himself from asking.

“I’ve always known when you’re lying.”

And with that, Silver feels the very last part of his heart wrench itself out of his chest. It’s true, he knows it is, because Flint saw past all his stories and his rhetoric and his leading questions and his feigned cluelessness. He had just been letting it slide all this time.

Flint looks up at him, finally, and he just looks sad. He just looks tired. “You kept this from me for weeks. Carried on with me, lying to my face every moment. I should have known, that day, when you asked me if I would trade this all to have Thomas back. I thought you were asking me in a roundabout way if I would trade it for _you_, if I could give it all up to make a life with you outside of all this.”

Silver wishes he would stop talking. This is so much worse than he imagined.

Flint sighs, and speaks again, but this time so softly Silver can barely hear him over the sound of the forest around them. “I think maybe I could have.”

Silver can’t breathe, and though Flint is feet away it feels like he has his hands tight around Silver’s throat. Silver almost wishes he did.

“If?” Silver asks, unable to not ask

A moment passes between them that could have been tender, could have had some softness to it, but they are all rough edges with each other now.

“I said you are the best of us. Maybe that’s true, maybe it isn’t. But when it comes down to it, you’re just like the rest of them. Just another pirate. You let your selfishness outweigh your goodness. _If_ you had told me the truth. _If_ you had given up your claim to me.”

“But you would have chosen him anyway. When given the choice between the man you loved more than anything and the man you hated and resented before we became… whatever it is we are, don’t tell me for a second you would even consider the latter.” Silver wishes he sounded less bitter. It gives too much of him away.

Flint is silent, and it is answer enough.

“But you didn’t give me the choice.”

There’s nothing left to say, after that.

They leave the island empty handed, but for the few men they have left and Woodes Rogers’ ship and sail directly for Savannah.

* * *

Silver thinks about returning to the maroon camp and explaining this all to Madi and wishes for the trip, no matter how excruciating it is, to last longer. The longer it lasts, the more he can pretend that he isn’t edging toward the last time he ever sees Flint, toward having to face all the consequences of what he has wrought.

Flint only speaks to him once the entire journey. Silver brings him a plate of food and Flint raises his head to actually look at him for the first time since they were in the forest together.

“What are you going to tell her?” Flint says. It lands like a blow.

Silver knows he could leave, he could refuse to have this conversation, but something in him knows that he is running out of chances to hear Flint’s voice, even turned in anger and derision toward him, so instead he leans against the wall and replies. “I thought the truth would be a good place to start.”

If it weren’t so bitter, Silver would say the sound Flint made was a laugh. “You know she’ll never accept it.”

He does know this, but he wouldn’t say as much to Flint. “Somehow I feel as if I should have seen this coming. The two of you are too similar.”

“Don’t make this into something it’s not. _You _manufactured this situation, you did this to us.” The words are accusatory, but there is no fire in Flint anymore. The fight has been steadily leeching out of him the closer they get to Savannah.

Silver takes a deep breath and wonders why he is doing this to himself. “She’ll believe me, or she won’t. She’ll forgive me, or she won’t. She’ll be safe, and she’ll be alive.”

“Safe and alive are far from fulfilled, far from happy or content.”

“No, they aren’t.” Flint pauses at this, and Silver doesn’t give him a chance to respond. “You’ve been fighting so long you’ve forgotten that in this life, alive is just as good as content, and safe is just as good as happy. I hope maybe someday you’ll remember.”

He pushes off the wall and leaves the room, wishing it felt less like an end.

Silver thought he knew what dying felt like, because he has felt a knife carve through his bone and his blood leave his body. This is what dying feels like. This part of him so tied up in Flint that in his absence Silver is left as an open wound.

He can’t bring himself to regret it, though, not ever, because Hands comes back and tells him Flint met a man in the field and fell into his arms, crying like a child. It is not fair, and it is not pretty, Silver thinks, not for either of them.

But it is enough.

* * *

_The same night that whitens the same trees._

_We, of then, now are no longer the same._

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading my story! All kudos and comments are greatly appreciated. Visit me [here](https://thislesbianlovesbuckybarnes.tumblr.com) on Tumblr to scream about Black Sails.
> 
> I absolutely couldn't have done this without my friend [Clare](https://qveenofthenorth.tumblr.com) constantly shouting at me that she was going to kill me for making her sad with this fic. Her input was invaluable.
> 
> If you enjoyed, consider reblogging [here.](https://thislesbianlovesbuckybarnes.tumblr.com/post/187953797567/i-fell-in-love-with-a-war-canigetaladies) on Tumblr.
> 
> -
> 
> The lines at the end are from the 20th of Pablo Neruda's Twenty Love Poems


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